External HD showing as device not ready?

Hi -

My old PC died a while back and I had some data on it that I needed. So I took out the IDE HD that was on it, purchased a basic IDE to USB cable, and plugged it into my new PC. And nothing happened. I played around with disk management, but it keeps saying that "device is not ready" when I am trying to initialize the old HD.

I tried rebooting, readjusting cables, even moving jumper settings (the old hard drive has about 20 possible settings, but some require up to 4 bridges and I only have 2), and every time it says "device is not ready".

Any ideas?

The new PC is running Vista, and the old hard drive has XP.

You need to change the jumper setting...to the appropriate mode...or Windows will never recognize the drive.

Who manufactures the drive...and what is the model number (not serial number) on it?

FWIW: When you say "initialize the drive", I don't think you mean that in the context that many will interpret it. Initialization when used re hard drives...implies that the hard drive needs to be formatted in order that Windows can see and use it.

Louis

You need to change the jumper setting...to the appropriate mode...or Windows will never recognized the drive.

Who manufactures the drive...and what is the model number (not serial number) on it?

FWIW: When you say "initialize the drive", I don't think you mean that in the context that many will interpret it. Initialization when used re hard drives...implies that the hard drive needs to be formatted in order that Windows can see and use it.

Louis

Thank you for the response. The HD is Hitachi Deskstar HDS722540VLAT20. I checked Hitachi's site, but their models for Deskstar only go back to HDS728xxxx... I tried a number of jumper settings - I think I need a couple more of those tiny plastic bridges though, as some combinations require up to 4 at a time, I just don't know where to get them from.

And I said 'initialize' because that's what I thought Disk Manager calls it... so if that has to reformat the HD for Vista to see it, there's no way to save the data on it?

Thanks again

You should only need two jumpers, and if you are using a PATA to USB adapter you will need to connect the jumpers in the Master/Primary configuration. You can see the jumper setting here.

You should only need two jumpers, and if you are using a PATA to USB adapter you will need to connect the jumpers in the Master/Primary configuration. You can see the jumper setting here.

Thanks, I tried that... no luck.

Is there any sure way to check if it's maybe the HD itself that's malfunctioning?

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Click on Drive Fitness Test under Analyze, Monitor, Restore Drive. Follow directions for creating bootable floppies or bootable CD.

Louis